But what the Spirit is actually doing in creation—and this becomes typical of everything He does in the pages of Scripture—is that He is creating a temple, a meeting place for God to meet with and to fellowship with His creation and especially with man. And in which man can also happily meet with God—of communion with Him, of fellowship with Him. Remember Adam walks with God. And in order that in this temple that God is creating through His Holy Spirit, man might be brought—as you remember the Shorter Catechism says in its first answer to its first question—man might be brought to know God, to love God, to trust God, to glorify God, and to enjoy Him forever.

So here are two ways, right at the beginning we can think about the ministry of the Holy Spirit and especially about His ministry in our lives. He comes to bring form to our formlessness, to bring fullness to our emptiness. And He comes because He wants to restore us to that kind fellowship with God in which we worship God in His holy temple.

The Spirit does this first of all in creation. I don’t think we often think about that. But the whole creation is actually a temple created for the worship of God by His image man. Turn for a moment to the book of Psalms and to the 19th Psalm. I probably should say Psalm but when I say Psalm (Scottish accent) I mean Psalm. Very famous statement at the beginning of Psalm 19 verse 1, “the heavens declare the glory of God, and the sky above proclaims his handiwork. Day to day pours out speech and night to night reveals knowledge.” Now if you think about it, what does that remind you of? A church service, doesn’t it? In a church service, in worship, there is the declaration of the glory of God, there is the proclamation of His handiwork, there is an outpouring of speech—and those of us who are preachers sometimes outpour that speech too long don’t we? There is an outpouring of speech, and there is a revelation of knowledge. And you see this is why God through the Spirit has brought order and fullness into the creation. In order that in that creation we might come to worship Him. And so the whole of creation becomes to us a pointer to the glory of God and an arena in which we come to praise Him and adore Him.